252 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



The seracs, which had presented no difficulty to Exchaquet a 

 twelvemonth before, were held by the guides to be impassable 

 even thus early in the season, and they preferred to turn them 

 on their south-eastern flank, formed by a crag known as La 

 Noire. These rocks are not difficult, but the route involves 

 some scrambling and the traverse of several steep snow-slopes. 1 

 De Saussure comments as follows on his experiences : 



' Our guides warned us that this route is much more dangerous 

 than that which had been taken the year before, but I do not lay 

 much stress on their statements, for one reason that present danger 

 always seems greater than that which is past ; for another that they 

 think to flatter their employers by telling them they have escaped 

 grave perils. Still, it is true that this passage of La Noire is really 

 dangerous ; and, as it had frozen in the night, it would have been 

 impossible for us to cross these steep and hard slopes, had not the 

 guides trampled steps in the snow the evening before, when it was 

 softened by the sun. 



' Next, as on Mont Blanc ' continues de Saussure ' we had to 

 meet the danger of crevasses concealed under a thin coating of snow. 

 These crevasses grew fewer and less large as we got higher, and we 

 thought we were almost free of them when we heard a sudden cry of 

 " The ropes, the ropes ! " One of our porters, Alexis Balmat, who was 

 about a hundred paces ahead, had disappeared of a sudden from among 

 his comrades, swallowed by a large crevasse, 60 feet deep. Happily, 

 half-way down that is, at 30 feet he lighted on a block of snow wedged 

 in the crevasse. He fell on this with no further injury than a few 

 scratches on the face. His greatest friend, P. J. Favret, at once had 

 himself tied to the rope and let down. The porter's burden was first 

 hauled up, then the two men separately. Balmat came out looking 

 a little pale, but showed no emotion ; he took on his shoulder our 

 mattresses which formed his load, and continued his march with 

 imperturbable coolness.' [Voyages, 2028.] 



The incident thus recorded is another example of the care- 

 lessness or ignorance of the proper use of the rope shown by the 

 Chamonix guides in most of the early expeditions. Even in the 

 seventies of the nineteenth century, some of the best Engadine 

 guides were equally reckless. The rope is irksome, and a smooth 

 snowfield does not suggest danger to a dull mind. 



1 The only danger, even for a novice, is from falling stones. But this is a 

 real risk, if a slight one. 



